Shoppers offer local entrepreneurs grand gift: Their holiday business

Bells chimed and cash registers rang at mom-and-pop shops downtown Saturday morning — sweet sounds — as holiday shoppers opened their wallets to support local businesses.

Store owners, with fingers crossed, looked optimistic.

“Yesterday was better than last year was,” said Sarah Evers, co-owner of Dancing Bear Toys Ltd. at 418 N. Main St. “I'm hopeful that it's going to start going back to how things used to be a few years ago. You've got to have a positive attitude.”

It's a little tough to feel jolly when you've been bruised by the recession, but sales don't seem so naughty this year, according to Evers. She credits some of that to the Small Business Saturday movement. The buy-local campaign is getting stronger, she said, and every little bit helps.

Shoppers who bought items with their American Express cards were eligible to save $25 on a purchase of more than $25 if they registered for the Small Business Saturday promotion at shopsmall.com.

“It's great that they're trying to get people to support small businesses. Not many credit card companies do that,” Evers said.

“We've had customers coming in for like two weeks saying, ‘I'm pre-shopping so I can come in and use my American Express card on that day.' We're happy about that,” said Valerie Welbourn, owner of The Fountainhead Bookstore at 408 N. Main St. “More and more people are doing this American Express thing.”

The Small Business Saturday usually has been “a really good day for us, but this year, more than ever, we've had” a lot of interest, Welbourn said. “I know last year (Small Business Saturday) was a factor in our sales.”

Other towns and merchants associations were kicking off buy-local campaigns to pump up small businesses, like the “Love Asheville, Shop Local” movement which armed customers with widely accepted coupons.

Some customers, however, made a point to come out on Saturday, discounts or not.

Kitty Etterman left her Hendersonville home without an American Express card, stopping at the Fountainhead Bookstore. She shopped on Small Business Saturday last year, too.

“I think we need to take care of our local businesses,” she said, “so I made a point of coming down and getting a book definitely in here.”

The advertisements, she said, just reminded her to mark the day on her calendar.

John Cooper, who moved to Hendersonville about three months ago, said he was out supporting local stores because he too was once a small business owner.

“ Most people don't appreciate how difficult it is to run a small business,” he said, standing in The Fountainhead. “We're doing all our shopping locally.”

He added that he would be paying in cash.

“We're doing our part,” he said. “It's a great downtown community.”

“Black Friday, I think, generally is more for the big box stores and the chains, and it's that craziness that they kind of produce,” Evers said. “We usually don't do huge business that day. Downtown, though, has gotten bigger and bigger every year on Black Friday, and I think it's because there are good shops. People feel like ‘I can park and actually do more than one thing.' ” The toy store opened in downtown Hendersonville in 1997, four years after the family business opened its first location in Asheville. The Fountainhead started up almost three years ago.

Main Street Director Lew Holloway said that if everyone in Henderson County shifted $20 from purchases they would have made online or outside the community to local business, the impact would be more than $2 million in sales.

Small businesses are personally involved in the community and make tremendous contributions every year by sponsoring sports teams, contributing to local charities and raising money for special needs, said Bob Williford, president of the Henderson County Chamber of Commerce.

Sales taxes collected by Henderson County businesses make up more than 20 percent of the county's budget and between 20 and 30 percent of its municipalities' budgets, according to The Chamber.